1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process for culturing streptococci which comprises discharging an active ingredient of the bacterium outside the body.
More particularly, this invention relates to a process which comprises adding pencillin or related substances during the course of the cultivation of the bacterium to discharge a substance produced by the bacterium outside the body thereby accumulating the product in the medium.
Furthermore it is an object of the present invention to provide SPF-100 which exhibits a direct cancericidal effect in mice and an immunoactivation effect.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Attenuated vital Streptococcus pyogenes has been already used to formulate a carcinostatic.
In addition there have been known a process which comprises grinding bodies of S. pyogenes, extracting an active ingredient therefrom with water or a saline solution and adding an organic solvent to thereby recover a tumoricidal ingredient as a precipitate (cf. Japanese Patent Publication No. 1647/1963) and another process which comprises bacteriolyzing S. pyogenes with a lysokinase such as lysozyme or cellulase or a proteinase and fractionating the active fraction as an aqueous phase (cf. British Pat. No. 1163865).
As described above, it has been well known that streptococci themselves or some ingredients thereof would exhibit a tumoricidal activity. However the conventionally known substances are merely bacterial bodies or soluble or insoluble polymer constituents of cells. In order to isolate an active ingredient from a bacterium, it is necessary to bacteriolyze or mechanically grind the bacterium to fractionate the whole. These treatments might complicate the purification so that the isolation of an active ingredient is very difficult. An example of an active ingredient which has been actually isolated and determined is a protein of 150,000 in molecular weight (cf. Japanese Patent Publication No. 43841/1973).